I’ve been banging on about this for the best part of two years. When Apple handed its MagSafe magnet-alignment tech over to the Wireless Power Consortium and it became the open Qi2 standard, then Qi2.2 bumped the charging speed up to match MagSafe properly, I assumed every phone maker with a pulse would have magnets built into their flagships within a generation or two. Instead we got Google’s Pixel 10 with Pixelsnap last year, a pile of third-party magnetic cases pretending to be the real thing, and Samsung explicitly leaving magnets out of the Galaxy S26 despite plenty of people asking for exactly that. So when Motorola turned up to IFA 2026 in Berlin with the edge 70 plus and a proper moto snap wireless charger with magnets built into the phone itself, that’s genuinely the headline for me, even with a new watch and phone launched alongside it.
For anyone landing on this cold, here’s the whole announcement in one go. Motorola launched three things this week. The edge 70 plus is a mid-premium phone with a 200MP camera and a 6500mAh battery, from £499.99 in the UK and €599.99 in Ireland. The moto watch ultra is Motorola’s most fully specced smartwatch yet at £369 or €429, with Polar fitness tracking, Wear OS and its own LTE eSIM. The moto snap wireless charger is a £39.99 magnetic charging puck that does up to 25W on any Qi2.2 phone and up to 30W on Motorola’s own hardware. All three roll out in the UK and Ireland from mid to late September.
The phone and watch are solid, competent upgrades and I’ll get into what’s actually new below. But moto snap is the bit worth paying attention to, because it makes Motorola only the second phone maker, after Google, to properly commit to magnetic charging as a real feature rather than a marketing bullet point. That’s still a two-team league nearly three years after Apple opened the standard up, and it says more about the rest of the industry’s nerve than it does about Motorola.
The motorola edge 70 plus
The 200MP main camera is the headline spec, and it’s the highest resolution Motorola has put in a phone. Backed by optical image stabilisation, 10x super zoom and 4K video, plus a dedicated macro lens and a 32MP front camera that switches to a wider group mode the second you turn the phone sideways, it’s clearly built around the idea that most people take more photos of other people than anything else.
Battery is the other genuine strength. A 6500mAh cell is rated for up to 42 hours of talk time or 23 hours of scrolling, which in real terms should comfortably clear two days for most people, and 45W TurboPower charging gets you back up quickly when it doesn’t. There’s also bypass charging, so the phone can draw power directly from the mains during long gaming sessions instead of cycling the battery, which matters more for long-term battery health than it sounds.
Design-wise, Motorola leaned into its Pantone partnership again, with four finishes (Mountain View green, Gray Lilac, Milky Blue and Sage) across acetate, silk and soft-luxe textures on a quad-curved body rated to military durability standards, with Gorilla Glass 7i on the front. Snapdragon’s 7s Gen 3 chip, 8GB of RAM and a 6.78 inch 144Hz AMOLED display round it out, alongside the usual Gemini and Circle to Search integration that ships on most Motorola phones now.
The edge 70 plus arrives in the UK from £499.99 for 8GB/128GB, or £529.99 for 8GB/256GB, both on pre-order from 3 to 21 September. In Ireland it’s €599.99 for 8GB/256GB, also on pre-order from 3 to 21 September, via motorola.com.
The moto watch ultra
Motorola’s watch line has always felt like an afterthought next to the phones, and the moto watch ultra is the first one that reads like Motorola actually wants to compete. The Polar partnership is doing most of the heavy lifting, bringing proper sleep staging, recovery scoring and a running coach that most smartwatches at this price still charge extra for or don’t offer at all.
The bigger practical addition is LTE with an eSIM, the first time a moto watch has been able to make calls, send texts and hold onto notifications without the phone anywhere nearby. Add Google Pay through Wallet, dual-band GPS and Wear OS with full Play Store access, and it’s a genuinely standalone device rather than a phone accessory. It’s also the first Motorola wearable with Qira built in, so you can talk to it directly rather than routing everything through the phone.
Battery is the one figure worth tempering expectations on. Up to two days with the always-on display switched off is respectable but not remarkable next to some rivals, though a 15 minute charge getting you back to a full day’s use is a genuinely useful safety net.
The moto watch ultra costs £369 in the UK or €429 in Ireland, both including two straps, and lands from 18 September.
Moto snap wireless charger, and why it’s the one that matters
On paper, the moto snap wireless charger is just a magnetic puck. It does up to 25W on any Qi2.2 phone, or up to 30W on compatible Motorola hardware using its own charging protocol, with overheat and overcharge protection and zero standby power draw so it’s not quietly sipping electricity all day. The European bundle also throws in a stand with an adjustable aluminium hinge and an Alcantara base, so it doubles as a bedside charger.
What actually matters is that Motorola built the magnets into the edge 70 plus itself, not just into a case you have to remember to buy separately. That’s the same approach Apple uses for MagSafe and the same one Google used for Pixelsnap on the Pixel 10, and it’s still a genuinely short list. Samsung had every chance to join in with the Galaxy S26 earlier this year and pointedly left the magnets out, despite plenty of people asking for exactly this.
I predicted, back when Apple first handed the magnet-alignment tech over to the Wireless Power Consortium, that most of the industry would have caught up within a couple of years. Nearly three years on, it’s Motorola and Google, full stop. That’s a genuinely disappointing pace of adoption for a standard that solves a real annoyance, fumbling a phone onto a charging pad in the dark, and it makes moto snap the actual reason to pay attention to this announcement rather than the phone or the watch.
Because the magnet ring follows the same Qi2 geometry Apple uses for MagSafe, moto snap and MagSafe accessories should physically align with each other too, even if charging speed depends on what both ends support. It’s a small detail, but it’s the sort of cross-compatibility that only happens when a standard is actually open.
The moto snap wireless charger costs £39.99 in the UK and Ireland, with sales starting 24 September and stock expected in October, via motorola.com and Amazon.
The TL;DR
The edge 70 plus is a well-specced mid-premium phone with a genuinely strong camera and battery for the money, and the moto watch ultra is the most complete smartwatch Motorola has made. But the thing to actually get excited about here for me is moto snap, because it means Motorola has done what most of the Android world still hasn’t bothered to and given a phone real, built-in magnetic charging instead of a compromise wrapped in marketing language.
I’d love to be writing this same piece about three more manufacturers by this time next year. For now, if you’re after magnetic charging on Android without buying into Google’s ecosystem, the edge 70 plus and moto snap wireless charger are, as of this week, one of exactly two ways to get it properly. The motorola edge 70 plus, moto watch ultra and moto snap wireless charger are all available to pre-order or buy from motorola.com from 3 September.
